PHP South Coast Conference 2016
11 Jun 2016 at Action Stations

I didn't personally get involved with any of the games this year, I ran out of time, but I did last year and I watched a game be played this year that looks really fun. I think this is a fab thing to have as part of a conference social.

Much Lazer, Wow Quest. Thanks for sponsoring this Roave!

I had to duck out of this talk half way through, but the first half was a great explanation of what a type is and demystified some of the jargon used to differentiate the way the different languages work. I am definitely going to keep an eye out for the rest of this talk.

It was really fascinating to have cryptology explained, and Chris did a good job especially with his slides of explaining how each strategy worked. Unfortunately I have to say I got a little lost in the middle - there were some terms from the domain of cryptology I hadn't heard and I struggled with that. It's so hard to balance a talk to make it interesting for those who know a good amount about this field and keep it basic for someone like myself who this is all very new to. In hindsight this probably wasn't the talk for me, but regardless I still learnt lots and it's given me a good base to do some research on.

Tess' approach to this talk surprised me a little (in a good way) that it wasn't just about .git. I've never used subversion but I got a nice feel from this talk about how it works and the differences between them.

Some slides were very busy and I wasn't sure where I was supposed to be looking, I think Tess could break up these slides into stages, similar to how she did with some of the opening ones. Although I like hand drawn things I think some of the slides around branching could have used a more formal format.

I attempted a talk about code reviews recently, and honestly Clair did a far better job than I did on this subject. This is a really versatile talk and I could see this being given at almost any developer event, some great reminders of how to do code reviews the right way.

I think the content for this talk is spot on, some visual accompaniment to some of the longer pieces of speech is the only thing I can think that could be added to make this even better.

Another clear and well paced talk from Michael.

I have always had problems knowing where to start with improving code performance and this talk has answered a ton of questions I've had rolling around in my head.

He showed the problem and then lead us through the thought process of how to find the solution by trying the obvious solution, and then testing that assumption against the data. It was great to sit in the talk and have my assumptions challenged, I also learnt a few new functions and some new things about functions I thought I knew well!

I really liked how Chris was very frank about his reasoning behind his decisions, I think that honesty is really important in these talks about career choices and I thought it was a nice way to open the conference.

It's always great to hear about other developers past and their journeys. One of the points mentioned was about 'having a plan' - I would have loved to hear some insights about how he has dealt with when the plan doesn't happen or takes a different direction, and also a little more about his plans for the future too and how far ahead that plan stretches.

I hope to see more talks like Chris' of developers sharing their journeys in future and will keep an eye out for other talks from him.

Witty, laid back, and the perfect way to wind down from a day of learning. And I loved your suit :)

Very nice, simple, and clear explanations about how some aspects of cryptography works. Christopher has a talent for explaining complicated concepts in a way that's easy to understand.

I would prefer more diagrams, maybe describing things step by step, to help with understanding. But even the bits I didn't quite grasp had small nuggets I could take away.

Really interesting talk!